Far too many people aren't getting the restful sleep they need for their physical and mental health. A good night's rest has been shown to affect mood, energy, internal health, and several other factors. These free apps and websites will help you fall asleep more easily or stay asleep without waking up several times at night.

1. Sleep Jar (Android, iOS): Audio Tools to Help You Fall Asleep

Sleep Jar offers soundscapes, guided meditations, and vividly visual audio stories to help you fall asleep

Some people propagate listening to meditation to fall asleep, while others swear on soundscapes that block out noise. Several popular audio techniques work for different people or even for different moods for the same person. Sleep Jar combines these into one app across four main categories:

  • Sleep Sounds: These are a series of soundscapes designed to relax and fall asleep, such as rainfall, ocean, white noise, etc.
  • Sleep Stories: If reading a story to you as a child helped you fall asleep, why won't it work for an adult? Sleep Jar has several original stories narrated by their voice artists.
  • Sleep Meditations: Short guided meditations that help you slow down, look inward, or dull out the voice within have proven to get you into a relaxed mindset to nod off to.
  • Sleep Journeys: For those with an active imagination, Sleep Journeys are visually-descriptive guided tours such as traveling on an Alaska snow train or hiking to a forest cabin, all narrated in soothing voices.

The free version of Sleep Jar offers a select version of these sounds, stories, meditations, and journeys for unlimited playback. The premium version ($1.99 per month) unlocks the full catalog and options like downloading them for offline playback.

Download: Sleep Jar for Android | iOS (Free)

2. DreamWell (Android, iOS): Dream Journal and Sleep Sounds & Techniques

DreamWell's sleep journal gives you multiple-choice options to track your dreams, sleep, and moods
By tracking your sleep and dream patterns over a long time, DreamWell can help you analyze the factors that give you a peaceful rest
Apart from the sleep journal, DreamWell offers meditations and soothing sounds to help you sleep

Can dreams determine the quality of your sleep? Maintaining a dream and sleep journal is one of the more unexplored ways to get a good night's rest, but it's increasingly popular on the internet. The people at DreamWell believe it's a good practice, and want to make it easier for you to remember what you dreamt about, how you felt, and how you slept.

Every morning, DreamWell asks you questions across three categories: dream descriptions, mood descriptions, and sleep descriptions. You rarely have to type anything, and you can tap a few of the multiple-choice tags to fill in your journal in no time. If you want to write your dream in detail, that's up to you. DreamWell chronicles your sleep, dream, and mood logs to show statistics on a chart about your recent and long-term patterns.

The app also includes other popular techniques to help you get better sleep. You'll find sleep sounds and sleep stories, along with guided techniques for breathing or falling back asleep. Like most such apps, only a few are available in the free version, while paying for the premium package unlocks the entire catalog. That said, the sleep journal works perfectly well in the free version, and that's DreamWell's core strength anyway.

Download: DreamWell for Android | iOS (Free)

3. Sleep Guide & Sleep Debt (Web): The Basics and Science of Sleep Hygiene

Rise Science's sleep guide is a crash course in how to maintain sleep hygiene while learning about the two laws that affect peaceful rest: sleep debt and circadian rhythm

Rise Science is a sleep app dedicated to helping you get the rest your body needs through scientifically backed methods. The app itself is paid, but the team has released an excellent guide on the concepts behind it.

The Sleep Guide by Rise Science advises six different sleep hygiene steps to improve your resting time. At its core are what the team calls the two laws of sleep: sleep debt and circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is your internal body clock, and the guide recommends multiple ways of figuring that out as you get to know yourself more.

Sleep debt is the amount of sleep your body needed in the past two weeks versus how much it has got. The Rise app is best for this, but plenty of free online alternatives like Sleepopolis's sleep debt calculator exist. Once you have your analysis, use it with Rise Science's guide for repaying your sleep debt to your body.

4. Habit.IM (Web): Free Habit Tracker and Streak App for Best Sleep Practices

Habit.IM is a free web-based habit streak tracker for best sleep practices throughout the day

Habit tracker apps and tools have proven effective in helping you stick to long-term goals. There is something satisfying about noting your progress regularly, and it also eggs you on not to break the chain. Habit.IM is a habit streak app specifically for sleep-related behaviors and best practices.

The app recommends a series of things you should do daily to get a good night's sleep. The activities are broken down into four sections: in the morning and during the day, 6 hours before sleep, 2 hours before sleep, and right before and during sleep. It's a nice checklist of reminders such as "avoid alcohol and cigarettes" in the 6 hours before sleep section or "sleep at the same time today as yesterday" in the last section.

All the advice in the app is something you've heard before. The purpose of Habit.IM is to help you stick to these good sleep habits, checking each of them daily to hit 100% satisfaction in your sleep cycle. The progressive web app also works on phones without installing anything.

5. Jennifer Piercy (YouTube): Guided Yoga Nidra Videos for Relaxed Sleep

If you've struggled with sleep, you've probably come across the term "yoga nidra" at some point. It's a yogic practice where you lie down and enter a state of "conscious awareness sleep," as the Cleveland Clinic puts it. Jennifer Piercy is one of the most popular yoga nidra guides on YouTube, as well as on apps and interactive workshops.

Piercy's YouTube channel offers free videos of different durations, from as short as 20 minutes to as long as three hours. The video isn't necessary for these, and you can listen to them as pure audio as Piercy guides you along the meditative process. From Mic to Business Insider, several users who have struggled with sleep and insomnia for years have vouched for Piercy.

If YouTube isn't your thing, you can also find Piercy's yoga nidra technique on Insight Timer, a meditation app with several purposes apart from sleep. Alternatively, check out her free yoga nidra meditation on Do Yoga With Me.

Find What Works for You

So why are there so many different apps and methods to help you sleep peacefully? Well, different things work for different people since our physical issues, our mental health, and our sleeping conditions vary widely. As a result, there isn't a single universal solution for better sleep, and that's okay. You will probably need to try these different apps and find what works for you. Given this topic's subjectivity, it doesn't matter what method is getting a good night's rest as long as you're getting it.